Laila, produced by Sahu Garapati on Shine Screens, is playing in theatres. In this section, we are going to review the latest box office release.
Plot:
Sonu (Vishwak Sen) is a sought-after make-up artist with the skills of a Cosmetologist. As someone who runs a magical beauty parlour in Hyderabad's Old City, he is pretty popular among the beauty-crazy women in the locality. He runs into trouble when his altruism leads to an unexpected consequence. Sonu's woes worsen when he piques SI Shankar (Babloo Prithvireeraj), a volatile local cop. Circumstances force him to don the get-up of a woman. Cut to the next morning, Sonu is now Laila.
Post-Mortem:
The story unfolds in a crowded, circus-like colony where people are either noisy, clownish, overly reactive or downright stupid. Some are all of these and more. The tone and tenor of the movie are so bizarre that even when the male lead is recounting a tragedy from his childhood days, you wonder how come there are characters who shed tears with the right chemical composition. You are like, "These tears must be snake oil".
Laila is a strangely-behaved 'woman' who is fond of seducing men. From a cop to a joker-type goon, none is beyond the sphere of 'her' overarching sexuality. It is as though Sonu is drug-addled and became a drag queen overnight to satisfy his unresolved mental pathologies.
The brand of humour on display is problematic to the extent that Beer Biceps will feel like Milk Biceps after you walk out of this A-rated movie. From colourism to faking sexual assault, there is no area that this film spares. Dr. Kamakshi Bhaskarla's character was marketed as a surprise element whereas she is a meek, emotionally brutalized Mrs whose track is shockingly regressive.
In Rajendra Prasad's Madam, new characters came to be conned by the protagonist's gender change. In Laila, most of the characters have already seen Sonu before and yet they don't get it. Even when the man-turned-woman talks like a slut (read 'ummadi mogudu'), the low-IQ retarded men don't see the red flag.
Leon James' music would have suited an over-the-top Tamil movie. The locations are artificial. Vishwak Sen's performance is uneven; without the liberal use of double-meaning phrases, words and gestures, even the minimal laughs he elicits would have been impossible.
Closing Remarks:
Laila is tonally inconsistent. The relentlessly loud, madcap brand of comedy has been mixed with an action comedy treatment. Why Vishwak Sen morphs into a woman is as frivolous as Wokes believing in 69 genders.
